Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Non solo Hippolyte è carente di aggiornamenti ormai da molti giorni, ma in più ci rifacciamo vivi con due video che nulla hanno a che fare con la fotografia e che sono l'emblema del puro compiacimento vintage. Perdonateci...
Not only Hippolyte has been lacking of updates for many days, but we also come back with two videos that have nothing to do with photography and merely represent the most pure retro/vintage self-indulgence. Forgive us for this...

Since summer holidays are over for most of the people, it is the right time to look at theArtificial Holidaysby Reiner Riedler, and enjoy all the pret-à-manger paradises around the world.After the triumph of the single thought (or la pensée unique), here’s the advent of the single place.

"These photographs are intended to be viewed as large prints, as it is much is lost in translation".

I love those photographers who care so much about the quality of their images, and care a lot about the way people can experience them.Michael Lundgren is one of them, amazing black & white to represent the ever-changing landscape of the desert, in his work Transfigurations.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Joni Sternbach, Surfers."I don’t know if there’s an alternative photography movement. If so, maybe there also needs to be some guerilla action to take digital photography out of the hands of the market place and into the hands of photographers".

We talked about this and much more with Joni Sternbach, photographer and artist of the wet collodion technique. Enjoy the read!

HB - Your work is mainly made with alternative photographic processes. How did you get into this kind of techniques?

JS - I hold Muybridge fully responsible for my interest in historic processes. His studies of the human figure in motion captivated my interest back in the 90’s. I began working with platinum printing, making Polaroid negatives of female figures in silhouette modeled after his motion studies. These pictures were an entry for me to thinking about where photography began, how women and specifically nude women were represented in art and how the use of props helped to determine gender roles. My use of the silhouette served a twofold purpose. It masked the details of the conventional nude and was a homage to 19th century folk art.

Edweard Muybridge, Athletes in Motion, 1887.

HB - There seems to be some sort of revamp of alternative photography in the past years: Sally Mann, Jerry Spagnoli, Robb Kendrick, to name a few. How did this happen, from your point of view?

JS - Some people call it the digital backlash, others find a different kind of detail and beauty in the chemistry and antique lenses. The immediate quality of the collodion process is extremely satisfying. I think it offers something that conventional film does not not. Polaroid does a similar thing. It also has different light and color sensitivities that lend itself to certain kinds of imagery and renders them very differently than typical black and white film.

HB - One of the interesting things in these techniques is for me the fact that the surface of the image can establish a new kind of relationship with what’s inside it, adding a strong tactile element to the vision, with an emphasis on the perception of the image rather than on the subject of the photograph. What’s your opinion about it?

JS - Making glass or tin plates is a rewarding process. And yes the object itself is amazing and tactile. I think that’s also a tricky thing and one I have many discussions about with other photographers, writers, gallerists and curators As an artist it’s not enough just to make an image that is technically interesting or intriguing. The subject matter and series has to hold up to same standard that any other body of work is held to.

HB - Which is the role of chance in your work, how does it affect the final result?

JS - Collodion has an unknowable and spontaneous quality that makes it exciting and challenging at the same time. Working with raw chemistry in the field lends itself to surprise and possible disaster. Each new batch of chemistry, every new location and different weather conditions all play a role in how the images look.

HB - YourSurfersare like timeless heroes, and this is what I like most of that work: the fact that the tintype and the modern look of the surfers don’t clash one with the other, therefore creating a paradox; they rather make something new together, giving to the human subjects that inner presence often lacking in the so-called deadpan portraits or environmental portraiture, where often there’s a simple subject/background situation. In your portraits I always have the feeling that it’s the whole image that counts.

Joni Sternbach, Surfers.

JS - Thanks. Working with an antique process that makes everything look old has its challenges. I would hope that the combination of technique and subject matter would blend well. I think of these pictures as landscapes that are inhabited, so yes, the whole image does count.

HB - Most part of your work involves the sea, the border between land and water. Your last work,The Salt Effect, is on the contrary a work on the absence (or the disappearance) of water. Can you tell us something about it? Why did you choose to work with mixed technique?

Joni Sternbach, The Salt Effect.

JS - I had an artist in residency in Utah that brought me out west. I applied for it while working on the Abandoned series. It’s a tough terrain and the weather played a huge role in what and when I was able to shoot. Working with collodion outdoors requires certain conditions (like winds less that 15mph) that film does not. The salt desert is a dried out lake bed, so the complete opposite or inverse of my previous subject matter. I found that just as intriguing, especially since the mirage effect makes land in the distance look like water.

Joni Sternbach, The Salt Effect.

HB - I also have the feeling that the images progressively got wider throughout your different projects, as if the field of vision broadened, from theOcean Detailsto the vast land and sky of some photographs from The Salt Effect.

JS - That’s true. I began working on landscapes with a narrow perspective, focusing on surface and movement as an expression of emotion.

Joni Sternbach, Ocean Details.

HB - Do you feel as some part of a ‘movement’ of alternative photography or do you think that there is no such thing?

JS - I don’t know if there’s an alternative photography movement. If so, maybe there also needs to be some guerilla action to take digital photography out of the hands of the market place and into the hands of photographers.

HB - Is there any photography or authors that you can consider as an inspiration for you?

"Our very survival depends not only on well-chosen leaders but also on informed followers with a firm grasp of global realities. As a quarterly focused on the most critical subjects of our time, dispatches reaches beyond what and who to the more crucial why and what can be done? Writers and photographers go to the heart of reality to reflect what they see without editorial pressures or commercial constraints. Reliable reporting and analysis are set within human contexts and a historical continuum".

This is an excerpt of the mission statement of Dispatches, a new magazine founded by photographer Gary Knight, also one of the cofounder of VII photo agency, with writer and journalist Mort Rosenblum and Simba Gill, founder of the pharmaceutical company moksha8. The first issue, In America, was released on June 2008, with a photo-essay by fellow VII photographer Antonin Kratotchvil,In God’s Country; the second issue, out soon, will be about the war in Iraq, with photographs by Noor photographer Yuri Kozyrev.

The work of Eva Sauer moves from portrait to industrial landscape and night scenes, always using the square format as some sort of small window through which she collects glimpses of a suspended world.